


The Road Back Home

by RynWill



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Student/Teacher AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 02:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3633306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RynWill/pseuds/RynWill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After 5 years overseas for University, Laura reluctantly returns home after her mother's death to take her first full-time teaching job at the local High School.</p><p>Trying to make the best of being back in town however is made undoubtedly more complicated by the prospect of facing ex- friends, ex- enemies and just angry exes in general. Not to mention a - really hot - student who seems intent on making her life as difficult as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> What was supposed to be the first chapter of a multi-chaptered fic (and still may be if people like it and I ever get round to writing more) but can stand on its own as something silly too.

It was strange, Laura thought, being home after so long. Everything looked the same as when she had left, when she was still little Laura, wearing pigtails and losing her lunch money through the hole in her coat pocket. Not that she had become big Laura since. Whatever achievements she had made in her time away, growing wasn’t one of them. And she still owned that coat. But the point was, she was very much different now, thank you very much – height and coat not withstanding – and it felt strange to be home. So very strange.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been back at all since leaving for university. Every holiday had been spent in the Hollis household in the traditional way, disgustingly festive and disgustingly happy. They’d been less happy after her mom had passed. And there lay the root of the problem. It felt strange to be home, to be living in town once more, without her mom there to help with the move, or arrange a welcome back party, and bake a terrible cake with her dad that would no doubt look like something that had fallen off the factory conveyor belt and been thoroughly stepped on afterwards but they’d eat it anyway and… and she really missed her mom.

And it felt strange to be home. Her dad had been elated though – of course - offering for her to return to the house for as long as she needed. He was less elated when she opted to rent an apartment on the outskirts of town, but his mood had rarely shifted from generally over enthused regardless. Stepping through the threshold of her childhood home for the first time since arriving, she had been nearly lost in an almost fatal hugging that lifted her feet from the floor.

It was nice though, and so like her dad. It was the type of hug worth coming home for.

So there she was again, standing outside her house – her dad’s house, she corrected herself, another strange thing to get used to – rapping her knuckles on the thick wooden door, bracing herself for impact all the while. She didn’t think she’d get another hug like last weeks near death fiasco, but it never hurt to be prepared she thought; something she’d learned from old Robert Hollis himself. She inwardly cringed; her dad certainly wouldn’t appreciate her thinking of him as old Robert Hollis any time soon.

“Laura, is that you?” His bellowing voice answered her knock, originating from the garden she could only assume. “Just come on through, I’m in the garden!”

Laura grinned. Clearly she’d missed her calling in life as a detective of Sherlockian skill. Detective Laura Hollis had a ring to it after all, though she wasn’t sure she’d suit a trench coat. It took her all of 10 seconds before she fired herself from her imaginary job to prevent that fashion disaster, and run through the pros and cons of Officer Laura Hollis instead. By the time she reached the garden she had worked brief yet illustrious careers as Private Investigator Laura Hollis and Special Agent Laura Hollis, before finally settling into the intrepid and exciting life of Laura Hollis, imaginary Investigative Journalist extraordinaire.

“Lois Lane, eat your heart out,” she mumbled with a pleased smile.

“Sorry, what was that?” Her dad called from his hunched position over the flowerbeds, wiping a dirty gloved hand across his brow. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the mud mark it left in its wake.

“I said you should probably wash up if we’re catching lunch together. I can’t be seen with you wearing dirt in your moustache.” She laughed, picking a small blade of grass from his hair. “What are you doing anyway?”

“Gardening.”

“Really? Because I don’t know a lot about gardening, but last time I checked it didn’t involve dying your hair with mud.” “I thought it suited me.” His bottom lip jutted ever so slightly. “But fine, I’ll go clean myself up. Everyone’s such a critic.” His eyes crinkled when she laughed at him, his mock frown turning into a cheerful grin. After the worlds quickest shower, he returned wearing a clean shirt but the same mud flecked jeans and Laura honestly didn’t know why she expected any different.

“Ready to go?” She nodded, trying to hide the roll of her eyes. It took them all of ten minutes to reach Betty’s Diner, and less than a two minutes after that for Laura to be enveloped in a hug from the elderly owner.

“Oh Laura, my you’ve grown.” Laura doubted the authenticity of the comment, but appreciated the intent. She was still holding out hope for a late growth spurt. That still happened at 24 years old right?

“Young Elizabeth has been asking after you. I told her you’d taken a job at the school. She was ever so happy to hear you’re home again.” Laura doubted that too. Young Betty Spielsdorf had been the bane of Laura’s life when after a long standing best-friendship in elementary school, she came back from the holidays one year insistent that everyone should call her Elizabeth and generally became no fun at all. That didn’t stop Laura from nodding with a grateful smile as she extricated herself to find a table.

“You see. I told you everyone would be happy to see you.” Her dad dropped himself onto the chair across from her with an encouraging smile, repeating the line of argument he had used every time she resisted moving back home.

“Dad, Betty is hardly everyone. And she was totally just being nice. You know ‘Elizabeth’ hates me.” She chewed out the name as if it tasted sour on her tongue.

“Well, you did throw sand in her face.”

“That was one time!” She eyed his wry smile with a huff. “And it was an accident. If she’d just played sandcastle with me in the first place like she said she would, it so never would have happened!” Laura for one knew she would never underestimate the perils of a children’s sand pit again, especially with the way Betty – Elizabeth – had screamed at her for being ‘sooo irresponsible, goddamnit Laura there’s sand in my eyes’. Even at the tender age of 11, no-one could accuse Elizabeth Spielsdorf of being immature. Her fine mastery of adult levels of vocabulary was only surpassed by her perfected stick-in-the-mud demeanour.

Laura grimaced, remembering the whole mortifying incident with perfect clarity, barely noticing when her dad excused himself to use the restroom. He’d been gone just a few seconds before she’d already moved on to considering an even more mortifying memory she knew she’d soon have to face. Laura’s relationship with Danny Lawrence had been a good one. Or at least, not a bad one by any account. They were childhood sweethearts in a way, and everyone was sure that they had the potential to be that sickeningly sweet couple that went to the same school and the same college and got married and had kids and a little dog and the whole white picket fence deal. And all of that sounded great to Laura really… just not with Danny.

One huge fall out and a few choice words about the tall redhead’s over-protectiveness later, and their relationship had ended just like that. Laura had been desperate to break free of the defensive bubble that her girlfriend and her dad had placed her in. After five years overseas, she had yet to speak to Danny since their break up. They’d seen each other a few times, across the street during the holidays, or in the same coffee shop, but a word had yet to be exchanged between them. Overall, it wasn’t the ideal situation to start with a new work colleague. In barely a week’s time, Laura was to start her new job as a teacher at the local secondary, and she was pretty sure there would be no avoiding Danny when she was already a teacher there too.

The very thought of that particular confrontation was about to send her into panic mode before she was interrupted by an unexpected impact of an unfamiliar object directly between her eyes. She blinked at the offending object – a piece of paper crushed into a ball – before scrunching her nose.

“Who the hell was that?” She looked up in the approximate direction of her assailant, and gave a start at the woman standing right beside her chair. How long had she been there?

“I’m your waitress sweetheart. Now are you going to order something, or were you just sitting there with that constipated look on your face for the hell of it?”

She looked monumentally bored, pulling out the pen that was tucked behind her ear with a sigh as if she had been waiting there for an age. Laura cringed slightly. Maybe she had.

“I can’t believe you just threw paper at me.” Laura narrowed her eyes. Who did this girl think she was? And how did Betty ever hire such a rude waitress? “And I did not look constipated,” she grumbled.

“I can’t believe you ignored me standing here for five minutes.” A sneer pulled at her lips. “And sure you didn’t.”

“Do you assault all your customers with paper projectiles?”

“Only the cute ones.” She smirked, before raising her brow in what Laura assumed was supposed to be an innocent expression that came off as anything but. “You looked like you were about to combust. I was saving a life.”

Laura’s chest shook with an unwanted laugh that she hid instead behind a roll of her eyes. “My hero.”

The woman shrugged. “If you died I’d have to clean the mess up.”

“Right.” Laura glanced at the name badge on the woman’s shirt. Carmilla. A beautiful name, Laura thought. It suited her. Her face at least, her personality was atrocious. “Well Carmilla, I’m kind of waiting for my dad to get back so-“

“That was your dad?” Carmilla’s eyes lit up with something. “You’re Rob’s daughter?”

Laura’s eyes narrowed once more. “Yeah. Laura. You’ve heard of me?”

Carmilla barked a laugh. “As if Rob ever shuts up about you. You’re going to be teaching at Silas right?”

Trying hard to hide her blush, Laura nodded. Her dad really had to stop telling random people about her life. The sudden predatory look that shone in Carmilla’s dark eyes only made her want to blush harder.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

Laura didn’t buy it for a second; Carmilla’s lips were already twisted in a way that made her heart beat a little bit faster. It was quite obvious that there was most definitely not nothing. “Well it’s obvious you have something to say.”

“Perhaps. But I have to find some way to keep my air of mystery, don’t I?”

Laura couldn’t be absolutely positive, but the dangerous glint in the other woman’s eyes made her 98% sure that she was flirting with her. The warmth in her cheeks made her 100% sure she was okay with it. She may have been rude, but she was also sort of funny, and ridiculously attractive. Not to mention she also had a sort of intensity that would have made Laura’s knees weak had she not been sitting down. In short, Carmilla was hot, and Laura was fighting really hard to stop her damned blush.

“So what will you be teaching, cutie?” 100% most definitely flirting. Laura mentally checked that box, all the while cursing the no doubt stupidly wide grin that was pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“English Lit. And before you make a smart comment about my age, I’ll have you know I am a fully qualified teacher.” She eyed Carmilla playfully, who fiddled with a raven lock of hair that had fallen free from her bun, the picture of faux innocence.

“I would never.” She paused, a smug look descending upon her angular features. “I was actually just wondering how you would see over your desk?”

Mouth agape in a half mocking outrage, Laura was readying a totally witty retort when she spotted her dad returning from the restroom. He smiled good naturedly at Carmilla as he took his seat.

“I see you’ve met Carmilla then? Carmilla this is my daughter, Laura.”

“Yeah, we’ve talked dad.”

“Well I’m glad.” He chuckled, his thick moustache twitching as his mouth did. “You’ll be seeing a lot more of each other at Silas, so I hope my two favourite girls get along.”

Laura blinked, looking back at Carmilla whose eyes had taken on the same mysterious glint from before. “I didn’t realise you were a teacher there too.”

The smirk that had adorned Carmilla’s lips earlier came back in full force, and Laura was simultaneously slightly turned on and more than slightly wary. The predatory gaze she was faced with could only be described as the type of gaze an animal in the wild would wear when regarding its prey. It was the type of gaze that preceded a ‘well shit’ type of moment that well and truly messed everything up.

It was the type of gaze - Laura thought – that spelled absolutely nothing but trouble.

“I’m not.” Carmilla stated.

Laura froze. She really hated being right.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted also on my tumblr (girl-with-the-dragon-age-tattoo.tumblr.com), feel free to shoot me any questions about my writing there. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. Let me know if you enjoyed it or y'know, if you didn't.


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